The Spire: Take Two
by Liesie
Summary: Late one night, I sat at the computer pondering all the inconsistencies and plot holes of the final Spire scene and took it upon myself to fix them. One 500-year-old Hero and few murders later, and "Take Two" was complete. A/N: sry 'bout the underlining


_**Disclaimer: **__**Fable I**_** and **_**Fable II **_**are not mine. If they were, stuff would have made a heck of a lot more sense, and the player would have had the option to kill Reaver and find a new Hero of Skill.**

"I thought he'd never shut up," Reaver commented off-handedly after shooting Lucien, the man whom I had hunted across the face of the globe for the murder of my sister, wife, children, and dog. He jerked his head to meet my withering glare. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want to kill him?" I was too shocked to do much more than twitch.

After regaining her feet, Hammer's visage clouded in mild confusion. "Lucien's. . . dead. So, what happens now?"

In a burst of swirly blue light, Theresa appeared in the center of the platform, looking detached as ever. I stared openmouthed. "What the hell, Theresa? You can teleport in here? Why the crap didn't you just port me here, like, ten years ago and let me shank Lucien while he slept instead of forcing me to give up my weapons, clothes, haircut, and experience and whittle away a decade of my life?"

The seer continued as if I had not just pointed out what an idiot and/or bitch she was. "Now," she started, "it is time you gained your reward. Your gift for saving the world from a madman's selfish dream. The spire has awakened, and it still has the power to grant one wish: yours. Come, take my hand." Against my better judgment, I complied.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light enveloped the two of us. Ack! Why did this always happen whenever someone touched her? It was like she had communicable magic teleportation AIDS.

"It's all right, little Sparrow," Rose's echo-y voice said. "Don't be afraid."

"Well, I wasn't afraid, until the ghost of my long-deceased sister told me not to be. Warn a guy before you come back from the dead."

Again, Theresa utterly ignored my comment. "You stand in the heart of the spire as the archon of the Old Kingdom did thousands of years ago. Now it is your turn. Make a wish, but choose wisely, for it will affect all of Albion.

"Sacrifice," an oversized card depicting a hooded figure surrounded by adoring fans popped up. "You may choose to revive all those who died in the Spire's making, but in doing, so know that you will never see your family again. Love," another huge card materialized, this one dominated by a glowing heart. "Those dearest to you, even your faithful dog, will be restored to life. But their lives come at the cost of the countless innocents who died in building the Spire. Or wealth," a third monstrous card, this one with a chest of gold, appeared. "More gold that you can imagine to spend on whatever pleases you, but any you loved and all the Spire's prisoners will remain dead and will not witness your newfound affluence. What will you choose?"

Without glancing at the pictures, I glared her in the eye incredulously. "You mean to tell me that this place took over twenty years, billions of lives dedicated to incessant labor, and an obsessed psychopath to build for the purpose of destroying the world and forging new one, and it can only grant me _one__wish_?" She nodded. I huffed and shifted my weight to one leg. "Well, that's just ridiculous."

Without warning, a gauntlet clapped down on my shoulder. I spun to face my would-be attacker and met a pair of cerulean eyes. The man's height alone would have been enough to cause me to take a second glance--rarely do I meet people whose height matches mine--but his visage was also covered in the fierce tattoo of a malicious grin that I couldn't help thinking I had seen somewhere before. In fact, his whole face seemed familiar. My eyes traveled to the giant glowing blade in his other hand, and I gasped in awed recognition. "The Hero of Oakvale!"

He dropped his hand. "If you say so. People have called me many things. I even went by 'Chicken Chaser' for awhile."

"But. . ." I sought for a more intelligent summary of my jumbled thoughts. Finding none, I settled for the unrefined and obvious conjecture at the forefront of my mind. "But you're dead!"

He gasped in shock and a tinge of fear. "I am? Crap!" Rooting around in his fanny pack, he snatched out a green bottle and promptly chucked it at the ground. It shattered, emitting a vapor that traveled through the air and into the warrior's nostrils. He breathed it in deeply. "There we go. I never realized how useful the Guildmaster's reminders were until he died. Now, almost every time I get wounded in a fight, I forget to use my potions and wind up having to crush a Resurrection Phial instead." Suddenly, he seemed to notice the floating cards. "Hey, watcha doin'?"

"Nothing much, just making a choice that will affect all of Albion."

"Ooh! Can I help? I'm good at making world shaking decisions!" The ingenuous gleam in his baby blues struck a chord in me. An incredulous chord.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked with an eyebrow raised so high it was in danger of merging with my hairline.

He nodded emphatically. "Of course! How do you think I got this?" As if on cue, a rainbow of sparks shot from his raised sword. "I had to kill my only surviving relative, my blind older sister, Theresa, to get it."

_Blind older sister Theresa?_ Even more confuddled, I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at the seer, who had still yet to comment at all on my conversation with the legendary wielder of the Sword of Aeons. "You mean her?"

He leaned slightly to the right to gaze over said shoulder before gasping. "Theresa? But I killed you in the Chamber of Fate!" He narrowed his eyes. "Did you swipe a Resurrection Phial from my bag while I wasn't looking?"

"The time grows short, hero," she pronounced. "Choose."

"Hey, Theresa, I'm right here." The warrior waved his sword in her face. "Hello? I'm talking to--"

"She gets like this now and then," I interrupted. "Sometimes, she just tunes out everything that isn't an answer to her question." _Namely, whenever I speak,_ I added bitterly.

"Oh. Well, what are you choosing?"

"I wrested an awesome force of power capable of reshaping the world from the clutches of a maniac, and--"

"Me too!" the Hero of Oakvale shouted in delighted awe before I could finish.

I leveled a disbelieving glare at him. "Did you get hit too hard on the head by a rock troll or something?" Mounting confusion slowly dispelled the joy from his face. "Ugh. Never mind." With a roll of my eyes, I continued. "As I was saying, I wrested an awesome force of power capable of reshaping the world from the clutches of a maniac, and now said awesome force of power can grant me one wish. I can either resurrect everyone who died in its construction, bring my family and dog back to life, or get an egregious lump sum of gold."

His brow furrowed. "If this superpower can reshape the world, why can't it resurrect the people who died building it _and_ your family? A few more souls to save shouldn't push it over the limit."

It pained me to say it, but the half-millennium-old dullard had a point. Grudgingly, I admitted he was right.

"And for that matter, I would think that the people your wish resurrected would be so thankful that they would _all _pay you an egregious lump sum of gold in gratitude."

I wheeled on the blind woman. "He's right! Why can't I just combine Love and Sacrifice to make Wealth?"

Blue light welled up along the walls. An enormous quake lurched through the chamber, and an equally massive sonic boom exploded around us.

For the first time in our long, long relationship, Theresa was brought up short. Her mouth flapped open and closed like a fish stranded on shore. At last, she conceded. "So be it. All those who have lost family and friends to the Spire have had their loved ones returned to them, confused but unharmed. Soon, all Albion will be filled with gratitude and praise the name of this great hero forever. When you return, your furry companion and your family will also be waiting for you." With that, we were transported back down to the platform where Lucien had been defeated.

After Hammer expressed her opinion on my decision and Garth stood detachedly in the corner, Reaver spoke. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, but on to more important matters; what about me? What do _I_ get? Some of that 'thank you' cash would be nice."

My eye twitch from earlier returned. "Oh, I'll _show_ you what you get." So fast I surprised even myself, I upholstered my pistol and shot Reaver right between the eyes. As his cadaver toppled over the edge of his circle, I growled, "No one kill-steals the target of _my_ lifelong quest for vengeance and gets away with it."

"You should check the body to make sure he didn't have a Resurrection Phial," the Hero of Oakvale pointed out.

"Why? I'd just _love_ to kill him again."

After Garth and Hammer had said their goodbyes and Theresa had sent them to their desired locations, she turned back to me with a devious look on her face. "And now it is time for you to leave. The world is yours to enjoy, but the Spire is mine. Begone," she added lightly. The air hummed with the beginnings of a spell.

"Whoa!" I cried, breaking her concentration. "This place is the most powerful weapon ever known to Albion. There's no way I'm going to just hand it over to you."

She scowled menacingly. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice."

"For this entire journey, you have emphasized the power I wield with my ability to choose, and now you tell me that I don't have a choice?"

"In effect, yes."

The Hero of Oakvale gasped. Before I even knew what he was doing, he had lunged forward and lopped off her head. It hit the floor and wetly bounced once before rolling off the edge of the platform. Her body slumped forward shortly after.

Startled, I leapt to the other side of the ring and drew my axe. "Why the hell did you do that?! She was your sister!"

"I came to terms with what I did to her in the Chamber of Fate years ago. To me, she was already dead." He removed a rag from his pack and meticulously cleaned away the blood from his sword. "Besides, I despise hypocrites." When I stayed motionless for an uncomfortably long amount of time, he glanced up from his blade and attempted to break the ensuing awkward silence. "So, what are you going to do with the Spire now?"

I blinked. "I--I'm not really sure. I don't even know how to use the thing."

"Maybe you should start by raiding that psycho's collection of info."

"Yeah," I nodded, not bothering to ask how he had known Lucien had data on it in the first place. Cautiously, I re-strapped my axe to my back. "Where did you come from, anyway?"

He blinked. "Why, Albion, silly. For a dream character, you sure aren't very perceptive." He spied the daylight pouring into the chamber from a minute crack in the wall. "It's morning already? Gee, I better wake up soon, or Elvira will get mad at me for sleeping in. Goodbye, Dream Man. I hope things go well with your tower of world domination." With that, he disappeared in a swirl of blue teleportation light.

Shaking my head, I ambled out of the room and started the long trek down to the base of the Spire, a new spring in my step. Sure, a legendary historical figure had just cut down the other legendary historical figure who had raised me after my sister's death, but all of Albion was now permanently indebted to me, my wife, child, and dog were alive again, and, if I could play the angle just right, I was about to come into a whole heap of money. I sighed. Life was good.

**A/N: Am I the only one who was shocked to find that Theresa was in the second game? The first thing I said after I read her name in the subtitles of one of the cutscenes was, "Theresa? Shit! Didn't I kill you in the last game?!" so I decided to bring back my original character to finish the job. I have no idea why I made the Hero of Oakvale such a ditz, but that's just how I pictured him dealing with the situation. Reaver didn't shoot Lucien when I played through the game, but I've seen him do it other times, and I was **_**pissed**_**. First, he kills Barnum (from whose thesaurus I borrowed the word **_**confuddled**_**), and then he offs Lucien before I get the chance! I mean, the **_**nerve**_** of that guy! I wanted to turn his face inside out, pour lye on the inside, and then reattach it. I'm not too satisfied with the ending. I was really hoping to work Lady Grey in there more than the vague reference I made. C'est la vie.**


End file.
